Faith Works 11-7-2025
Jeff Gill
Anticipation at war with nostalgia
___
We live in a consumer capitalist economy, designed to reward those who most effectively stimulate our desire to purchase things.
When we're hungry, this takes the form of how advertising and product placement and manufactured convenience causes us to make choices between ready to eat goods out in the marketplace, or items prepared for consumption at home. Why buy one burger rather than another? Some of it is habit, some of it is location, and today's acme of consumer capitalism can be found in loyalty programs, most recently translated as "in app" purchases.
Just to clarify, I'm largely a fan of capitalism and markets. That's a longer debate for another day if you favor socialism and centralized control. But my frustration, if that's the right word for a confused feeling of discontent, is around how poorly most of us stay awake, aware, and mindful of how consumerism works. It's not complicated, and it's easy to resist, but most of us let it blow us around and be nudged in directions not in our longer term best interests.
As my doctor likes to remind me, because he's a very good doctor, I can make purchases in advance of my hungers that are better for me than the ones I make out of convenience, from impulse, which are often both more expensive and less healthy. But it takes intentionality.
Being a Christian minister I am thinking along these lines as I watch the Christmasification of absolutely everything, starting roughly fifteen minutes after trick-or-treating ended (or mid-September if you go by TV ads). Now, I am not wanting to be a Scrooge here. At home we could put out one of those self-declaration signs, but ours saying "In this house, we watch Hallmark Channel films all the year round, without judgment." You may or may not know that those fine folks have branched out into Spring themed movies, Summer as well, along with Hanukkah Hallmark stories, etc. But in July, you get a month of Christmas movies, and they pop up all year round . . . and we're here for it. Plus, other channels have launched to pick up an echo of that holiday two-hour neat package story vibe.
It's just that pushing all the Christmas-y stuff back into November a) obscures Thanksgiving and fall and apples and roast turkey and the rest of this month's pleasures, and b) continues to overwhelm the quiet ancient and proper understanding of the liturgical season of Christmas, which goes AFTER Dec. 25 to at least January 6 and Epiphany, the twelve days of Christmas you know, and on traditional worship calendars all the way to February 2 and Candlemas. The groundhog is a later addition to the cultural round.
Make Christmas LAST, I would plead, not start sooner. But that's where consumer capitalism kicks in. Anticipation can trigger more purchasing than even the mystic power of nostalgia, and for longer. You can start marketing decor and accents and plan-ahead gifts in August, for pity's sake, five months worth of sales. After? The energy isn't there.
I know I'm both shouting into the wind, and preaching to the choir, all at the same time. But I feel sad at how ruthlessly and thoroughly we see Christmas peeled back and tossed aside on Dec. 26, when in practice we should be just getting going on it. Some of the Christmas music stations have started carrying on into New Year's Eve, which is something; not long ago they switched back their format Christmas evening, as the stores all started putting up Valentine's decor.
Put up your lights as early as you want, friends, just don't be in such a hurry to take them down. Let's allow Christmas to last this year, even into next.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his practice is putting up the tree on St. Nicholas's Day and taking it down on Epiphany. Tell him how you make Christmas last at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Jeff Gill
Anticipation at war with nostalgia
___
We live in a consumer capitalist economy, designed to reward those who most effectively stimulate our desire to purchase things.
When we're hungry, this takes the form of how advertising and product placement and manufactured convenience causes us to make choices between ready to eat goods out in the marketplace, or items prepared for consumption at home. Why buy one burger rather than another? Some of it is habit, some of it is location, and today's acme of consumer capitalism can be found in loyalty programs, most recently translated as "in app" purchases.
Just to clarify, I'm largely a fan of capitalism and markets. That's a longer debate for another day if you favor socialism and centralized control. But my frustration, if that's the right word for a confused feeling of discontent, is around how poorly most of us stay awake, aware, and mindful of how consumerism works. It's not complicated, and it's easy to resist, but most of us let it blow us around and be nudged in directions not in our longer term best interests.
As my doctor likes to remind me, because he's a very good doctor, I can make purchases in advance of my hungers that are better for me than the ones I make out of convenience, from impulse, which are often both more expensive and less healthy. But it takes intentionality.
Being a Christian minister I am thinking along these lines as I watch the Christmasification of absolutely everything, starting roughly fifteen minutes after trick-or-treating ended (or mid-September if you go by TV ads). Now, I am not wanting to be a Scrooge here. At home we could put out one of those self-declaration signs, but ours saying "In this house, we watch Hallmark Channel films all the year round, without judgment." You may or may not know that those fine folks have branched out into Spring themed movies, Summer as well, along with Hanukkah Hallmark stories, etc. But in July, you get a month of Christmas movies, and they pop up all year round . . . and we're here for it. Plus, other channels have launched to pick up an echo of that holiday two-hour neat package story vibe.
It's just that pushing all the Christmas-y stuff back into November a) obscures Thanksgiving and fall and apples and roast turkey and the rest of this month's pleasures, and b) continues to overwhelm the quiet ancient and proper understanding of the liturgical season of Christmas, which goes AFTER Dec. 25 to at least January 6 and Epiphany, the twelve days of Christmas you know, and on traditional worship calendars all the way to February 2 and Candlemas. The groundhog is a later addition to the cultural round.
Make Christmas LAST, I would plead, not start sooner. But that's where consumer capitalism kicks in. Anticipation can trigger more purchasing than even the mystic power of nostalgia, and for longer. You can start marketing decor and accents and plan-ahead gifts in August, for pity's sake, five months worth of sales. After? The energy isn't there.
I know I'm both shouting into the wind, and preaching to the choir, all at the same time. But I feel sad at how ruthlessly and thoroughly we see Christmas peeled back and tossed aside on Dec. 26, when in practice we should be just getting going on it. Some of the Christmas music stations have started carrying on into New Year's Eve, which is something; not long ago they switched back their format Christmas evening, as the stores all started putting up Valentine's decor.
Put up your lights as early as you want, friends, just don't be in such a hurry to take them down. Let's allow Christmas to last this year, even into next.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his practice is putting up the tree on St. Nicholas's Day and taking it down on Epiphany. Tell him how you make Christmas last at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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